Welcome to Settled Up, the Payment Expert podcast series where we get to know the person behind the profession.
This week we speak to Erica Stanford, adviser at CMS UK, who is training to cross Antarctica. We set the usual music, film and books questions aside for this one.
Read the full interview with Erica Stanford, CMS UK below.
So, not the usual six questions this week – tell us what you’re training for.
I’m a polar explorer in training. Next year I’m crossing Antarctica. I’ve been training for the last two years – lots of prep trips, learning to ski, polar survival training, all the different courses.
Next up is polar medical training, then more expedition trips, and then the crossing itself: four months, 2,000 kilometres, from the north coast to the South Pole and then down to the coast on the south side. I’ve never been to the North Pole, though – some of the training trips have been to the Arctic, but not there yet.
Is there a song that gets you in the mood to train?
Not really – I’m sort of useless with music. I’m more of an audiobook listener, sometimes podcasts. Every now and then I hear a song I like and go and find it, but then I never remember what it was afterwards.
Which audiobook has stuck with you?
I love the Yuval Noah Harari ones. I recently listened to a really good one about how people lived in the medieval ages.
I’m very diverse – sometimes fiction, sometimes non-fiction, whatever grips me when I’m looking for a new one on Audible. I haven’t had time to read proper books for a long time; if I do read, it’s for fun – escapism, easy reading.
Where did the love of the poles come from – a film, a documentary?
I’ve always been obsessed by deserts. When I was little my parents took me on some amazing holidays – desert safaris, really remote places – and I’ve had a lifelong obsession with remote places ever since. I love the dryness, the barrenness, the lack of people.
Antarctica is the world’s biggest desert. It looks so bleak and so remote, with no other people for 1,000 miles around. I’d always seen polar explorers and thought what they did was incredible, but I didn’t think I could do it. Then I met one, got talking, asked a lot of questions, realised I could – and started training.
You had to learn to ski for this. Were you ever a skier?
No – I’m still scared of going downhill. I’d skied a couple of times before but with no confidence; I didn’t like ski lifts and was scared of being out of control. The skiing for this is very different, though.
It’s cross-country most of the way to the South Pole, uphill, dragging much more than my body weight, so you’re going very slowly. Depending on the snow, every single step is hard.
You’re not out of control – it’s more about getting the technique right so you’re as efficient as possible.
Anything funny lined up to get you through four months out there – a comedian, a sketch?
No – I’m not taking earphones at all. I’ve made that conscious decision. I don’t want the distraction. Partly it’s for safety, and partly I’m just really looking forward to four months of not being able to have any distractions like that.
Will you have any contact with the outside world?
We’ll have a Starlink, so internet every evening – we have to send videos back and do proof-of-life calls each evening. We could even record a Payment Expert podcast from the South Pole!
(Let’s not hold Erica to that though!)
We’ll be talking to Erica Stanford on the next Payment Expert podcast – where we’ll ask whether stablecoins move real money or mostly trading flows, why regulators still treat traceable crypto as the higher laundering risk, and what a payments firm should change first to get ahead of AI-enabled fraud. Catch the full conversation then.
